All companies want to keep your custom. Now, most companies try to win you over with brand loyalty, but the frustrating thing about tech companies is that they can use their technology to trap you. The very gadget or software that you’ve spent your hard earned money on, will make it as difficult as possible, for you to switch to an alternative.

The average iPhone owner for example, spends £80 in Apple’s App Store. When I recently switched to a Google Nexus One, I lost use of all £80 worth of my apps. That money is now wasted, those apps have absolutley no use to me anymore, because I cannot install them on my new phone.

Online stores are become more and more popular with handheld devices. I’m not talking about your ebuyer or bestbuy, I’m talking about your App Store or Market Place. The problem is, they’re all locked-down to some extent.

Fair enough, if I buy another android phone I can install all the apps I’ve bought on my Google Nexus One, as I did when I moved from an iPhone 3G to a 3GS. The same is probably true for Kindle to Kindle 2.

But what happens when Apple stop selling the iPhone, or someone releases a better eBook reader than the Kindle, or if Google end the Android project? All of your purchased applications, books, mp3s become useless.

We need to make things transferable!

This is the exact reason I used to rip my mp3s (before the magnificence that is Spotify), instead of paying for a service like Napster or Yahoo Music. Most of those services were DRM based. There were just too many restrictions on what you can or cannot do with the music you purchase.

So before you splash out on the iPad, Kindle or any other eBook reader – and before you upgrade to an iPhone, Nexus One or other smartphone – remember, the money you spend on books/apps/music for that device, may well be thrown away with the device.

Why should you have to hack your Kindle in order to read eBooks you obtained from somewhere other than Amazon (see: over-priced)? Why should you have to jailbreak your iPhone to use apps that Apple doesn’t want to ‘approve’? If you ask me, you shouldn’t,

Google Voice is going to change the mobile space.

Think about it, when you buy a new mobile phone, you’re usually focusing on the hardware – you find something you really like, then you have to battle with yourself and the providers, to try and find a tarrif that fits you. For the most part they’re overly expensive. If there’s ever a reason you don’t buy a new phone, it’s usually because of the contract surrounding it. Wether that be having to move network, or getting locked into another x month term, it’s never pleasant.

Google are big enough to bring VoIP into the mainstream.

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So last night was The Europas – an award ceremony for Europe’s finest Internet Start-ups, hosted by TechCrunch UK. I have to say this was easily the best Tech-scene event I’ve been to. There were so many interesting people to talk to, the awards were greats, and of course the sponsored bar was better than a kick in the teeth!

I’m still quite hungover actually, so I’ll write up a more in depth review of the actual event on Sporkings.com over the weekend. But for now here’s my experience; What a night! I spoke to so many people, about so many cool projects, namely;

The nice guys (and girls) from MindCandy.com,
Paul Walsh, the Irish opportunist himself.
It was great to see Nikhil Shah again, he’s doing big things with new startup mixcould.
Nick Ferris Photography (your site is down! where can I see all those photos?)
Miranda, Jon, Tash and Sandy from the soon to be launched odbody.com, Huddle, Clio Collins, Said, Amazee, comufy, Morgan Stanley, ViCommerce (Gemany), econsultancy.com, Google, Spotify, Seraphim, hub.india, Infocomm, and of course Robert Scoble and Rocky Barbanica – I bumped into these guys on Monday, just outside our office. Farringdon’s a small place.

There were so many other internet peoples I can’t possible list everyone. Plus alcohol seems to affect the memory – who knew!

Speaking of bad memory, I cannot recall what time the actual event itself ended, but there was a very packed after-party across the road at ‘The Hide’. I remember backing up Jasper from oneDrum when some drunken guy was wanting to pick a fight lol. Something to do with Jasper greeting the drunken guy as ‘baldy’. Then once the after-party dispearsed, Ruk and I ended up at the odbody.com appartment, where we ate cheese on crumpets (yes, we’re British!) from a roof-top apartment with views of the London Eye – dangerously high after that many units.

I also remember getting a decent discount on cab ride to Oxford St due to being able to have a Germany conversation with the taxi driver. That’s entrepreneurship right there, lol.

The beautiful @rassami has setup a new venture off the back on The Europas, with co-organiser @petrajohansson . So watch this space for more interesting events in the London Tech-scene, hopefully in the not-too distant future. More start-ups launching off the back of start-up events, got to love it.

For everyone I met last night, it was really good to meet you. Even @yiannopoulos, but I’ll so no more on that one

There’s something wrong about that picture, I have to admit. But when I got invited to a round-table style conference at MS, I could hardly refuse. I actually had a good time too. They were discussing their web products, to a small group of start ups. I’ll give a quick roundup of what they discussed.

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So we’ve all been wanting to say this for a while. ‘Screw IE6′. But we can’t, or at least businesses can’t, and therefore web developers can’t. We all know there is still a massive number of uneducated web users, still browsing with IE6. Therefore we have to design to their needs. Special needs, as we call them in the UK (IE6, not the users of course).

Any web developer will tell you what a pain in the backside this process is. First you design your site, which will tend to work in Firefox, IE7 and Chrome, with maybe a few tweeks. Then you have to re-design a whole bulk of the site again, in order for it to work in IE6. It’s a real joke.

Google really stood up for the team recently, when they started urging Gmail users to ditch IE6, and replace it with Firefox or Chrome (they’re keeping open minded, proving it’s not a bias thing, they’re doing this purely for technical reasons). Personally I think this is great news. Google is one of the few big voices that the masses of web users may actually listen to, especially small business, who I assume are the majority of people still hanging on to IE6 – but also the home users who are just totally unaware that there are better browsers out there.

Good one Google. Glad to see you have our back.